Washington's Asian policy to focus more on business

Washington's Asian policy to focus more on business

By Christopher Hines

HONG KONG, Sept. 5 (AFP) - Members of a high-powered US business delegation that swung through Hong Kong after a presidential trade mission to China say they witnessed a historic shakeup in US policy towards Asia.

US policy, according to the delegates, is now focused on winning business contracts and creating jobs back home over the political and security concerns of the Cold War era.

"For many, many years, our foreign relations in the United States ... were driven, in nearly every case, of matters geopolitical, not matters economic," said Joseph Gorman, chairman of TRW Inc., a US engineering and high-technology company with annual sales of 8.5 billion dollars.

"What you see here is an historic change," said Gorman, one of 24 American business leaders who accompanied US Commerce Secretary Ron Brown's trade mission to China last week.

John Bryson, chairman of Southern California Edison Co., a major US utility that expects to sign two billion dollars worth of contracts in China, said he has never seen the US government and business work so closely together in developing overseas export markets, particularly in Asia.

"The United States government is an extremely effective partner and advocate for the United States business community," said Bryson, also a member of the delegation. "We are very pleased by the leadership provided by the commerce secretary."

Brown said that for the first time in its history, the United States has developed an export policy that will actively use America's political power and diplomacy to win contracts for its companies overseas.

"This is a new partnership between the US government and the US business community," said Brown, whose trip to China yielded more than six billion dollars in contracts for US companies. "And we are only at the beginning of what we can accomplish ... one of our priorities has to be creating jobs for Americans."

While in Hong Kong, Brown heard complaints that the US intelligence and military offices here are believed to employ dozens of personnel, remnants of a time when priority was given to monitoring the activities of the now-collapsed Soviet Union and China's formerly closed society.

The US Commerce Department, however, still only has three officials in Hong Kong to develop American business activities in a rapidly expanding Asia.

Brown acknowledged the problem and said he planned to "beef up operations throughout Asia," including the opening of a US commercial office in Shanghai, which would provide American companies, particularly small and medium-sized ones, help in establishing a presence in China.

This type of government assistance can be encouraging and vital to smaller US companies that do not have the resources and clout of a large corporation, said Susan Corrales-Diaz, president of Systems Integrated, a small high-technology company in California.

"It does mean a lot in a place as large and diverse as China," said Corrales-Diaz, also a member of the delegation.

This new policy under US President Bill Clinton has come under criticism for giving business concerns priority over other issues, such as human rights, especially since Clinton renewed China's most-favored-nation trade status in May despite mounting abuses by Beijing.

But Brown contends that "commercial engagement," with US businesses leading by example in an economically expanding China, is the best way to improve the human rights situation there.

"Those who assumed our role within the Chinese market would almost certainly be less concerned than we would be about issues such as human rights," he said.

Delegation members said the United States had also been falling behind European countries, particularly Germany, France and Britain, because of the soft loans or aid they provide to Asian countries tied to projects involving companies from their respective countries.

Brown said the United States export bank is taking a new aggressive approach in linking development loans and grants to projects involving American companies.

"We will use all the fair and legitimate tools at our disposal to ensure that we win the market share that we expect in China, in Hong Kong, in Asia and around the world," Brown said.